Model Home Gets a Makeover

Heidi Klum, Jennifer Connelly, Patricia Field, Liz Hurley...

Supermodel Heidi Klum, 29, is getting some work
done. But it’s not what you’re thinking.
The Victoria’s Secret pin-up, who recently ended
a short-term fling with Red Hot Chili Peppers front
man Anthony Kiedis, is in the midst of an
extensive renovation of her new bachelorette pad, a
$2.495 million penthouse on Bank Street in the West
Village, just blocks away from where Jodie Foster,
Nicole Kidman, and Calvin Klein have
recently bought new places. “It was a
dump!” said one broker who saw the sprawling
apartment. “It needed a lot of work.” The
3,200-square-foot apartment includes two fireplaces, a
sauna, a steam shower, and 1,800 square feet of
outdoor space with river views. A broker for the
Corcoran Group, which handled the deal, didn’t
return calls.

Serves Them Right: Joe Millionaire Pays

Joe Millionaire almost lost its butler. Paul
Hogan, the Aussie manservant who has become a star
in his own right since the show debuted on Fox,
recently sat next to a high-powered entertainment
executive on a flight to L.A. They started chatting
about Hogan’s contract, and the exec
couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Paul said he had no perks or anything,”
our tipster reports. “They wouldn’t even
put him up in hotels.” Incredibly, Hogan was
only getting a few hundred dollars a week, the
standard fee set by the butler-employment agency where
producers discovered him. Well, that all changed just
a day before Hogan was to do his final four shows. The
exec hooked him up with a Hollywood attorney, who
warned producers that they’d better cut Hogan a
deal. “He basically called them and said,
‘You can’t do this. You’re earning
millions, and you’re making him send in gas
receipts for his car rentals,’ ” says our
tipster. “ ‘Well, guess what? He’s
not coming in tomorrow.’ ” After the
attorney declined one offer from producers,
we’re told, they came back with more money, and
Hogan accepted. Since then, things have only gotten
better. We hear Hogan is working on a deal to become a
celebrity spokesman for a major hotel chain.

Jennifer Connelly: Baby Makes

When we called Jennifer Connelly’s rep a
couple of weeks ago to ask if it was true that the
Academy Award–winning actress was pregnant, the
rep insisted she wasn’t and laughed, “Are
people just saying that because her boobs looked big
at the Golden Globes?” Well, just days later,
Connelly’s rep called back to confirm that yes,
Connelly is expecting. She declined to give us the due
date, but the daddy is definitely Connelly’s
hubby of just under two months, Paul Bettany, 31, one
of Connelly’s co-stars in A Beautiful
Mind. Connelly, 32, has a 5-year-old son, Kai,
with former long-term love, photographer David
Dugan.

Patricia Field Slides Into Fashion

Patricia Field’s Fashion Week strategy is
really below the belt. Her show on Friday will be
sponsored by none other than K-Y Liquid—yes,
that K-Y. “If we can give K-Y some of our
glamour and they can give us some corporate strings,
that will be a wonderful outcome,” she told us.
Free samples will be handed out at her after-party at
Lotus, where Field and partner David Dalrymple
will unveil the new bottle that they designed for
Courvoisier. Keeping with the Valentine’s Day
theme, folks from the Astro-to-Go astrology Website
will provide sex and love readings in the VIP room.
But it doesn’t stop there. Field will also
curate “101 Alternative Uses for K-Y
Liquid,” a traveling exhibition.

Bridget LeRoy: Over the Rainbow?

Bridget LeRoy, eldest daughter of the late
Warner LeRoy, the famed restaurateur behind the
Russian Tea Room and Tavern on the Green, is eager to
cash in her inheritance—a house on her
father’s 50-acre estate in Amagansett. She and
her hubby, Eric Johnson, headed north to
Warner, New Hampshire, in August with their three kids
to live in a house they bought for $342,000 with money
given to them by another LeRoy family member, who has
asked not to be identified. Now Bridget could really
use the money from an estate sale for her newest
project, Tend and Befriend, a retreat for up to
sixteen women that LeRoy will open in October with
business partner Jane Björk. The retreat
will occupy a converted 5,000-square-foot barn on her
new property. LeRoy, 39, whose mom is Warner’s
first wife, writer Gen LeRoy-Walton, has also
become an ordained minister of the Universal Life
Church after taking a course taught via the Internet,
and the property’s icehouse is being converted
into a nondenominational chapel, where LeRoy will be
able to marry people. “This just came to
me,” she told us. “I have chills just
talking about it.”

Liz Hurley: Diamonds Aren’t Forever

Even Liz Hurley can’t always get what she
wants. Harry Winston arranged for a security man to
pick up the $3.5 million worth of diamond jewelry that
Hurley borrowed for last week’s AMFAR benefit as
soon as the gala ended. Hurley, however, had other
plans. “Come with us to a Burger King in Times
Square,” she cooed when the guard arrived at
Cipriani 42nd Street. No thanks, said the guard.
“Come on,” Hurley pleaded. “It would
be so much fun to walk through Burger King in all
these diamonds.” But apparently that
didn’t sound like fun to the guard, and he
insisted she hand over the 33-carat earrings and
20-carat ring. Hurley did, but no word on whether she
got her fast-food fix. Speaking of Harry Winston, we
thought we recognized the $6 million, 80-carat yellow
diamond dangling from the Isadora necklace that Kate
Hudson wears in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
It’s the same one we reported on after last
year’s Oscars, when host Whoopi Goldberg
lost it for a short time after it dropped into her
cleavage.

Gandolfini Takes a Whack at Botany

Carter Coleman, founder of the African
Rainforest Conservancy (ARC), has made James
Gandolfini an offer he couldn’t refuse: the
opportunity to name a flower recently discovered in
Tanzania. Coleman first got in touch with the
Sopranos star last year when the actor agreed
to co-host ARC’s annual fund-raiser.
Unfortunately, Gandolfini got caught up shooting an
episode in a Pennsylvania quarry and couldn’t
make it. Months later, Coleman approached Gandolfini
and asked him not only to host this year’s
benefit on April 5 at 24/Fifth, but to name a
yellow-petaled weedlike flower. Gandolfini
hasn’t divulged any of the names he’s
thinking about. (The Bada bingus?) ARC’s
become very good at getting stars in touch with
nature. Last year, Harrison Ford named a rare
subspecies of butterfly.

Hamptons Update: Waksal Sits Tight, Zellweger

It seems like the East End hasn’t seen the last
of insider-trading poster boy Sam Waksal. The
former CEO of ImClone and friend of Martha Stewart
has decided not to sell his Wainscott hideaway. We
hear that about six weeks ago, a woman made an offer
to buy the house not far below the asking price of
$5.9 million, but she backed out just before signing
the contract. Shortly thereafter, another buyer came
along and offered the full asking price, but Waksal
apparently changed his mind. However, Waksal still
wants to unload his other house, on Potato Road in
Sagaponack. That one’s listed for $6.5 million.
(In October, he sold the adjacent lot for $3.125
million to his music-industry-mogul neighbor, Peter
Mensch.) Meanwhile, it’s
official—Renée Zellweger is
bi-coastal. As we recently reported, the
Chicago starlet was looking for a house in the
Hamptons. We hear she signed papers for a manse in
East Hampton. She already has a Bel Air home that she
bought in October for $6.8 million.

THE WAY IT IS: He turned 86 in November, but
Walter Cronkite isn’t slowing down. We
ran into him at Blue Smoke during the recent party
celebrating the release of CBS newsman Bob
Schieffer’s memoir, This Just In: What I
Couldn’t Tell You on TV. He was asked to
join Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom
Brokaw, and Schieffer for a group photo across the
room. “Could you bring them to me?,”
Cronkite asked. “I don’t want to lose my
place at the bar.” Naturally, they complied.
Meanwhile, Cronkite is appearing Off
Broadway—sort of—in Classic Stage’s
modern telling of Shakespeare’s A
Winter’s Tale. He has an uncredited role as
the Oracle of Delphi. But don’t look for him
onstage. The Oracle appears as a voice played on a
tape recorder wheeled onstage at the show’s
climax.

IN THE RAW: First, Lizzie Grubman says
she wants to open a bakery; now her lawyer, Ed
Burke Jr., is getting into the food business.
Burke and restaurateur Jeff Resnick are opening
Jeff and Eddie’s Seafood in the Sag Harbor space
that used to house Phao, Resnick’s Thai place on
Main Street. Manager Tora Matsuoka told us,
“It will be New England clam chowder mixed with
a raw bar.”

SWIM FAN: Hogan, the high-end leather-goods
company, is thinking about starting a swimwear line.
We hear execs are in talks wtih bikini designer
Maria Buccellati about creating swimsuits that
will match with a variety of Hogan bags. Buccellati
thought of the idea during the opening of
Hogan’s new store in Miami.